


A Black and Colored Mantle

by ninemoons42



Series: Floating Bridge of Dreams [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bodyguard, Chinese Legends, Dreams, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Kimono, Legends, Past Lives, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The elements of this story were taken mainly from the Chinese legend of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jade_Emperor#The_princess_and_the_cowherd">the princess and the cowherd</a>, which is also the basis of the Japanese festival of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata">Tanabata</a>; as well as from the worldwide legends of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_maiden">swan maiden/youth</a>, which also influenced the Japanese legend of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennin">tennin</a> and their <i>hagoromo</i> - on which the Noh play of the same name and the manga/anime <i>Ayashi no Ceres</i> are based.</p><p>The detail of Erik being unable to speak was taken from the Greek myth of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomela_(princess_of_Athens)">Philomela</a>.</p></blockquote>





	A Black and Colored Mantle

title: A Black and Colored Mantle  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 4650  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG-13  
notes: Written for [](http://xmen-tales.livejournal.com/profile)[**xmen_tales**](http://xmen-tales.livejournal.com/). I'm grateful to everyone who cheered me on for this story, especially the following amazing people whom I deeply appreciate: [](http://nekosmuse.livejournal.com/profile)[**nekosmuse**](http://nekosmuse.livejournal.com/) , [](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/profile)[**papercutperfect**](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/) , [](http://keio.livejournal.com/profile)[**keio**](http://keio.livejournal.com/) , and [](http://tybalt1701.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tybalt1701.livejournal.com/)**tybalt1701**.  
warnings: Charles Xavier's comics background and the "everyone trying to kill you" aspect of Ayashi no Ceres.

  
Waking up today is difficult. Waking up now, after what he now knows is one of his art benders, means feeling everything he’s been ignoring and forgetting over the fugue of god knows how many days and nights he’s been gone. Waking up now means picking up the pieces of whatever he’s been working on. The thing about Charles and his art benders is, he never really remembers what the work is, or what it’s about, or even what inspired it, until long after he’s forced back to the land of the living.

If he’s lucky.

It’s happened before.

It’s been happening for some time now.

Charles groans softly: he's reluctant to leave the warmth of his threadbare sheets, but he gets up somehow and stumbles to the bathroom. He has to muster the courage to look at himself in the mirror, when the lights finally flicker on.

Charles Francis Xavier is pale like the sort of pale you see on people who spend their days hidden away in basements, doing only goodness knows what. There are two very prominent freckles on the bridge of his nose, and about a hundred thousand more scattered over his back and his chest and his arms. His eyes, in this harsh light, are dark blue, and the bruises ringing them are darker – almost purple, edging on green and yellow.

There are faded black smudges of ink near his temples, and a newer streak still glistening on one cheekbone – and he stares at himself in uncomprehending horror, and he reaches out to his reflection, to the skinny boy who looks like he’s been seeing ghosts for years.

It takes him a while to remember what he’s standing in front of the mirror for – but at last, he reaches for the small plastic container of skin scrub and he washes up, and he ends up with every nerve ending in his face alight, with flaring red patches on his cheeks and the scent of walnut shell on his skin.

He still has a streak of ink on his face, stubbornly clinging to the beginnings of the crow’s-feet around his left eye.

And when he finally comes back to his work area, to survey whatever damage he’s wrought this time and maybe remember what he’s been working on at all, it still looks like a very localized hurricane’s been through. At least this is something he’s already familiar with: he looks at the heaps of paper and his fine _sumi_ brushes scattered everywhere, and he looks at the dishes of water and ink, dry now. Clean-up for this will be a chore and a half.

He looks at the books and reference materials scattered under the desk and the trailing wires of his iPod disappearing into one of the drawers.

All of this is normal.

All except for the sheet of paper on which he catches a glimpse of a long black sleeve, a stark contrast against the five layers of color beneath.

Charles snatches that sheet up, and tries to remember.

It’s a struggle, but in his mind’s eye he can see the dream from three nights ago, the same dream that comes to him around the time of his birthday, every year since he woke up screaming at the stroke of midnight on his sixteenth birthday. He’s starting to think that he plunged into this latest art fugue with the vague hint of the notion that this was the year when he would finally capture the elusive images of that recurring dream, once and for all.

He remembers half-falling out of bed and being angry about that dream and the way he'd been woken up from it, by it. He remembers being sleep-deprived for a solid week, remembers planning to spend the first few days after the end of term recovering from all the projects and all the coursework. It all became moot after that dream. He remembers swearing under his breath as he prepared his ink, as he rolled up his sleeves and pinned his paper in place.

And then he remembers what happened when he picked up his brush: here, now, he remembers dipping it into the water dish and then into the ink, fragrant smoky burrs of glistening black catching in his teeth and beneath his fingernails. He remembers looking past the walls of this place, and he remembers a dark drop falling onto the thick and roughly meshed paper, to be quietly absorbed and fade out a little around the edges.

Now Charles blinks, and holds up what is obviously his own handiwork – and he doesn’t recognize it.

Oh, certainly, he knows his lines, he knows how he fills in the larger areas of black, and he knows where he switched brushes to go into the finer details...but he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, neither the nearly flat matte of the ink nor any of the slashes of color.

He blinks at that, and at the very least he can remember that he’d done almost all of his projects in black ink, maybe one or two in blue. None of his recent work had required colors – but there are the tubes of paint in a loose circle on his desk, the caps put back on askew; he notices the paints in the same order as the layers half-concealed in the nearly unrelieved black of the portrait.

Dark blue figured in gray swirling lines; deep jade green; pale gray edged in gold; dark purple figured in thin black stripes; scarlet.

Still holding the paper by the edges, Charles half-falls into his rickety chair and doesn’t think about missing it, or about getting dumped onto the floor: he keeps staring at this piece. It is clearly something he created unless someone else has mastered the peculiarities of his own signature, a series of thin sharp strokes written off to the side. This is probably one of his best works, one of the best things he has ever created.

Except that it’s a tragedy because he can’t explain it. He can’t give it a name.

He doesn’t even know who the subject of the painting is: a three-quarter view of a man who is either sitting in a chair or on his heels, hands folded compactly in his lap. The black of his robes is both relieved and emphasized by the colors peeking out of his sleeves, a combination that Charles knows doesn’t really exist out in the real world but seems to suit the subject admirably, giving him a regal and restful air – though he also looks like he could get to his feet in an instant, draw some kind of weapon and be ready for a fight, all without losing his focus or disturbing his serenity.

Charles tries to focus on the face: thin lips pressed tightly closed, as though in concentration or displeasure or vigilance. Dark hair combed back from his face, which is all edges, with strange sharp cheekbones and a square jaw and a nose that seems crooked when viewed from certain angles. The broad forehead is lightly lined and creased.

The man in the portrait has gray eyes that are slanted upwards at the outer corners, making him look even more fey and otherworldly than he already is.

There is nothing familiar in the face, in the pose, in the robes – nothing that Charles could have pulled from memory, from life, or from nature. It is the painting of a face that Charles has seen only in his dreams, and now that he looks closer he knows he’s not even near to capturing everything about that image: something that only lives in the depths of his subconscious, something that comes back to life every year, once a year for the past five years.

That’s the disconcerting part, he thinks, because he’s an artist, and he’s had years to get used to the idea of the contrast between his inner and outer lives. There is a life that flows around him in its noise and smells and constant fleeting touches, a life of his senses that he shares with the people around him whether he knows them or not; and then there is a life that exists only when he closes his eyes and opens up his mind, that is often black and white and gray and stark.

And while Charles might prefer the life that winds through the world of his mind’s eye, it’s nothing if he can’t dwell out in the realm of his real senses as well, because he takes his inspiration from there, because that’s where he finds the cues that he then expands upon in paper and brush stroke.

Except for this one, evidently – Charles thinks of his dreams, thinks of their clockwork recurrence, and wonders.

///

The next day is his birthday.

Charles thinks of the morning of his sixteenth, and then as now, he doesn’t know what to feel, and doesn’t know what to say – doesn't know what else is left to say.

He begins by doing the same thing he has done every birthday for the last five years: he crosses to his closet and pulls out the small black lockbox stowed behind his threadbare and unraveling cardigans, and he pulls out the topmost piece of paper, crinkled and creased now from years of handling.

He’s read the words over and over again; he’s got them memorized, now, from the thin spidery script of long meandering loops to the wavering quality of the ink, to the blots in the margin, to the signature at the bottom.

_From this day henceforth in the eyes of the law I no longer recognize my son Charles Francis Xavier as legal heir, neither to my estates nor to my possessions, neither to my assets nor to my debts, neither to my property nor to my monies. I provide no bequests to him, and I no longer recognize him as a member of my family._

The paper is signed _Sharon Marko_.

Every year he does this, and every year he freezes, and has to stop himself from doing something stupid. There is no point in raging against this piece of paper. There is nothing for him in Westchester, anyway, because there has been nothing there for him for a long time now: he’s always known about the things that were missing, and he’s had years to stop yearning for the things he’s always wanted, always needed.

And again, that’s the thought that makes him move, but this year, the movement is a little bit different: in the past, he’d simply locked the document back up. Not this morning: he takes up his brush and he grinds his ink into an impossibly thick puddle, and he begins this year by drawing a thick dark line across the words of the document.

It doesn’t make him feel better – but it does mean he’s not going to be reading those words again, short of destroying the document or shredding it or burning it up, and he thinks about time and its passing as he makes breakfast.

He’s just steeping the tea when something pounds on his door and he nearly jumps out of his skin in his fright. He casts about for some kind of weapon to defend himself with; there is a broken umbrella in the stand, and a baseball bat with a long crack running the length of it. The bat will have to do: Charles hefts it in white-knuckled hands. When someone or something bangs on the door for the second time he winces, and flattens himself into the corner nearest the locks.

Silence greets him – silence, that is, and a soft groan, and that’s what makes Charles open the door at last, baseball bat and all.

There is a man on the doorstep. He is curled in on himself, and there is dark blood already drying on what little of his skin Charles can see. The man is wrapped in a leather jacket and the hems of his trousers are shredded and torn, and he is all in black, and –

There is no one else in sight but him and the man – the corridor is empty, the kind of rushing empty that Charles knows from fights, and the decision he makes is an impulsive one.

It’s not easy to lift the man to his feet, and it’s not easy to haul him in and make sure the door is locked once again – but somehow Charles manages it, and the man helps by struggling to move his feet in time with Charles’s faltering steps, and, once he’s deposited the man on his couch, Charles digs around in his cabinets for his first-aid kit. As an afterthought, he pours his hot water into a basin instead of into his mug.

Charles waits for the man to struggle out of his jacket – there’s a nasty long rip in it, and, strangely enough, it smells like storm and like seawater. That’s the moment when the man looks up, looks at him.

Charles nearly drops everything he’s holding. He puts the basin down on the floor, and some of the hot water sloshes out onto his foot, but he never notices, because he’s looking at the man’s face - and Charles has seen him before.

Dark hair, black threaded with copper and a deep burnt red. A face made up of sharp edges and odd angles and faint lines. Gray eyes. And scars: one over the upper lip, and one glancing past the right eyebrow.

Black jacket, black clothes, an extra black belt wound around the waist, above the trousers – and Charles is still sure that he’s looking at the man from his painting, the man from his dreams. The world stopped making sense half an hour ago, but he’s still here, and he’s still got to do something about the bleeding.

Charles clears his throat, and tries to smile at the not-quite-a-stranger, and he says, “I...I can’t pretend that I understand what’s going on, but strange things seem to happen to me on my birthday, so I will try to take things in stride and try to at least look after you. Will you let me? I won’t hurt you. I only want to make sure that you’re all right, and will be all right.”

The man meets Charles’s eyes, and his bloody hand closes around Charles’s wrist and tightens, very gently, fingertips snug against Charles’s pulse. He nods, once.

Charles breathes a quiet sigh of relief as he uncovers the extent of the man’s injuries: defensive wounds on his forearms and on the palms of his hands – the scars look far worse than the current damage – and a long shallow slice to the ribs. The blood washes off easily, and the man’s expressions barely flicker as Charles cleans him up.

“I don’t know anything, and I’m not pretending to know anything,” Charles murmurs as he takes the roll of bandages back from the man so he can wrap the torn-up wrists and hands. “But if it will help you to tell me what happened to you, I will be here to listen. I’m also not going to be much help in the matter of getting you out of here safely, but that’s not going to stop me from doing what I can.”

That gets him a soft huffing sound that comes and goes, and Charles glances up in bafflement – and that fleeting look becomes an out-and-out stare once he figures out that the man is _laughing_.

It does help to ease the tension, and Charles shakes his head and turns back to his task, but he’s smiling a little and doesn’t care if anyone notices it.

The man stays silent even as Charles picks stray splinters out of his scratched-up skin, and every time Charles looks at him to see how he’s doing he can only see the pain in the lines of the stranger’s face. But he doesn’t press, and doesn’t pry, and he carefully ties off the bandages.

When he looks around for the shears, the man moves, and then Charles finds out what the extra belt is for.

The sparse light in the room glints off the long, wickedly curved blade in the man’s hand; and the knife shrieks softly as it slices through the bandages.

Charles blinks, and manages to untie his tongue long enough to say, “Well, that will work.”

The man smiles as he puts his knife away – it’s more of a quirk of his lips than anything. There is a distinctly amused look in those almost-familiar gray eyes. Charles watches him open his mouth, and then close it, and then the man shrugs and looks away, examining his bandages.

Charles sits back on his heels, and tilts his head to the side, inquiringly. “ _Can_ you talk?”

The man shakes his bowed head.

Charles keeps in the little sound of dismay that rises in his throat, and he looks around – and he feels something akin to triumph, to a circle being closed in one stroke, when he spots a clean _sumi_ brush on his desk.

He knows the man is watching him move around, watching him put away the first-aid kit and watching him pour the bloody water out of the basin.

When he offers the man the brush and some paper and the dishes of water and ink, he sees the first real expression cross the man’s face, and it is an expression of surprise and, fleetingly, pleasure.

Charles smiles, and says, “I’m Charles. And please do not take this amiss, but I’ve seen you before. In my dreams. Um, I actually do mean that.” He clears his throat. “ _Do_ I know you?”

Again that enigmatic smile. The man’s right hand closes awkwardly around the brush, but he’s clearly done this before. Words on the paper, in a tight neat script: _Erik. I know who you are._

Charles stares at him. “And I don’t know anything about you, except your face – explain, please.”

The brush moves quickly across the paper; it’s a good thing Erik’s characters are small, because he seems to have a lot to say. _I know about your dreams because I share those dreams. Been looking for you. More importantly, been protecting you._

“What?”

_You’re in danger. Have been for past five years._

Charles knows he’s gaping like a landed fish.

Erik reaches out with his free hand and grips Charles's shoulder; the grip is warm and strong and fiercely protective. He flips the sheet over, and dips the brush again. _You said strange things happen to you on your birthday. Tell me._

“I – freak accidents, usually,” Charles begins – and then he blinks at Erik and adds, “They weren’t accidents? They were all – what, they were all _attacks_?”

Erik nods, and leans over the paper again. _Nearly run over by a bus. Almost fell out of a sixth-storey window. Offered poisoned tea. Followed by assassins. Sent a mail bomb._

“I don’t remember any of those...” and then suddenly realization dawns over Charles. “Oh, no!” He suddenly seizes Erik’s free hand in both of his own. “You weren’t joking when you said you were protecting me – you know about these things because _you stopped them_.”

 _You don’t have to take me at my word,_ Erik writes. _I’m carrying evidence._

Charles watches him go through the pockets of his jacket and produce a small black flash drive.

Erik then writes, _Security camera footage._

“Is there a reason why I’m being...targeted or something?” Charles almost squeaks, and he knows he’s squeaking - his embarrassment can go hang, because he has more important things to worry about. “I’m no-one important – in fact, I stopped being anything like important five years ago, when I became just another penniless starving artist....”

Erik smiles, and he should look mocking, with all the teeth and all the lines around his smile, but he only seems to be kind and sympathetic. _You really don’t know. I can explain it to you – but I need more paper._

Charles flaps his hand in the direction of his desk. “Help yourself,” he whispers.

Erik doesn’t seem to have any problems moving around the desk and the chairs and the battered couch – not to mention Charles, who is still rooted to the floor – and when Erik comes back, he thinks for a moment, and begins to write, and the letters are now running together in his haste.

_Your life was placed in danger the moment you were cut off from Westchester. I know you were thrown out. I know you were told you could no longer go home. Your mother didn’t know, either. You were safe as long as you could go back there. Your father wanted to protect you._

“Because?” Charles’s breath is coming too fast. He tries to calm down. He holds himself close.

Erik looks at him - really looks at him - and then he gets up again, wincing a little for the bandages pulling around his torso, and sits down right next to Charles, right in Charles’s personal space. He and Erik are touching all along their sides, an unbroken line of contact from shoulders to hips.

Little by little Charles unwinds, and leans into Erik, and Erik does the opposite of pulling away. He’s so close Charles can feel the warmth he throws off.

And then Charles starts – Erik is tapping his wrist with the other end of the brush – he looks down at the paper, where the next line is just one word long. _Better?_

Charles closes his eyes. “Yes. A little.” He takes a deep breath. “Thank you.”

Erik shrugs, a graceful movement, and he starts to write again. _I know I have to explain the rest. But I also have a few questions to ask._

“Yes?”

_You said you saw me in your dreams._

Charles finds himself laughing, quietly, and there is only a slight edge of hysteria in it. “You don’t have to take me at _my_ word,” he says, and he goes to get the painting. He can see Erik’s eyes widen when he offers the sheet. “Because I have this. This is you. I painted you, and I don’t know why I did, or how long I took to finish it – I just woke up yesterday morning and I had made this, and I don’t remember how or even why.”

 _This is me,_ Erik writes, and his hand is shaking just a little. He puts the brush down and runs his fingers delicately over the portrait, over the solid black of the sleeves and the stripes of color peeking out.

Charles stares, looking at Erik unsettled as he looks at _himself_. The portrait Charles had completed, and he remembers his own confusion, wondering how he’d painted someone he’d never seen in life, in his life.

Now that someone is right here next to him, and looks equally unsettled, and Charles watches him take up the brush and write on the other sheet of paper.

_You – you’re good. Very talented._

“I am also cursed with an extremely overactive imagination, it seems,” Charles says, “because here you are dressed like this, and I painted you dressed like that.”

 _It’s not your imagination. I remember wearing kimono._ Erik laughs softly. _Perhaps I was never so grandly dressed like this, and perhaps I never wore such rich colors. It was not my place to do so, you see. But yes. I know about wearing kimono. It’s been a long time, though. Lives and lives and lives. Waiting._

Charles stares, and then blurts out, “Who are you? _What_ are you? And what do you have to do with me?”

Erik smiles, but doesn’t look up from the paper – he’s drawing, now, on a new sheet, and his lines may be uncertain, but it’s clear he knows what he’s doing, and he can evoke entire scenes, entire landscapes, with just a few lines.

Charles watches as a familiar scene takes shape under the brush: a bridge of wings linking two shores, and two shapes meeting in the middle, reaching out to each other.

“Which one are you, and which one am I?”

Erik smiles, and shrugs. _Whichever one you might be, I will still be the one protecting you, because you committed no crime._

“And did you?”

_I am being punished, but I too must have been innocent. I believe that there is no crime in interceding for others._

“Is that why you – ” and Charles reaches out to Erik and brushes his jaw with his fingertips, and he watches Erik turn briefly into the touch, then meet his eyes, and nod, once.

_Do not pity me. I am not sorry for what I have done, and I have no regrets. I cannot speak, and that is all._

_It doesn’t mean I don’t exist. It doesn’t mean I am not._

“Yes, I – I suppose so,” and Charles doesn’t know why he’s still leaning into Erik, because Erik is writing again. “What are you trying to say, now?”

Erik shrugs and keeps going, and Charles peers over his shoulder at the words: _I have to protect you, because that is what happens in the dreams, in our dreams. Every time we are separated, you die, and then I don’t know where I go, until I have a chance to find you again._

Charles takes a deep breath. So many new things. Things he’s had to learn, things he’s had to find out: today, this week, this month, this year. This _life_ with all of its strangenesses and miseries and beauty.

He thinks, and watches Erik make another attempt at illustrating Vega and Altair; his lines are crooked and tentative, but he knows what he’s doing, and the images soon resolve into the weaver and her shuttle, and the cowherd and his crook.

After a while he realizes they’re huddled together near his desk, back to back. After a while he notices that he looks warily at the door and out the windows, and that Erik does the same after a few minutes – the two of them are already watching out for each other, and it feels right, somehow, like this is always how it has been and will be. As constant as the turning wheel of the year, as constant as the coming of the night when the separated lovers could keep their tryst.

Charles taps Erik on the shoulder, and holds out his hands; puzzled, Erik gives him the ink and the last sheet of paper, and Charles puts the paper on the floor, pinned under one knee, and he starts to write, balancing speed with grace: _You’re not alone now. I’m with you. And you’ll protect me and I’ll look after you._

And he shows the paper to Erik, and he smiles shakily and says, “Okay?”

Erik looks at him, and looks at the words he’s written down, and he holds out his right hand.

Charles takes the paper in his left hand and Erik’s hand in his right.

And when the first rattle and pop of suppressed gunfire shatters the windows they move together, as if they've been doing it all this time, all throughout time: Erik shielding Charles and Charles guiding Erik through the rooms – and they don’t let each other go, and Charles is still carrying his words and the portrait, and Erik his knife and the last image of the stars meeting over the bridge.

It’s enough to start with, once again.

-a beginning-  


**Author's Note:**

> The elements of this story were taken mainly from the Chinese legend of [the princess and the cowherd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jade_Emperor#The_princess_and_the_cowherd), which is also the basis of the Japanese festival of [Tanabata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata); as well as from the worldwide legends of the [swan maiden/youth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_maiden), which also influenced the Japanese legend of the [tennin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennin) and their _hagoromo_ \- on which the Noh play of the same name and the manga/anime _Ayashi no Ceres_ are based.
> 
> The detail of Erik being unable to speak was taken from the Greek myth of [Philomela](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomela_\(princess_of_Athens\)).


End file.
